Geek out with me about critters and plants on a mountaintop in Virginia. I’ll share what I’m learning as I try to bring native plants back on 200 acres of old farmland and tell stories from my encounters on the mountain.

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In this issue

• Field notes: First sightings

• Signs of life: Friend/foe?

• Recommended listening

• Book news

• Mystery solved!

• The Official Mountain Poodle

Field notes

First sightings

April has almost managed to escape me in more ways than one. Plants are shooting up all around me, and I’m frantically trying to keep up with the work I want to get done in the fields before they become too crowded with dense growth or bramble to access. I’m pulling or spot-treating invasives, as well as trying to identify the native plants I’m seeing before they’re hidden by their neighbors. This has led to a few exciting (for me) discoveries!

The steep slope I call the Sledding Hill had not been bush-hogged in a while—maybe 2 years? It was mowed this winter, and I wandered down for the first time a couple of weeks ago. (Wandering down requires huffing it back up, which is easy to forget about until it’s time to do it…) That’s when I discovered a plant I haven’t seen anywhere else on the mountain—a native black haw viburnum (Viburnum prunifolium). At first I thought I was looking at a tall elderberry—the flowers are very similar, but it was the wrong time of year for elderberries to bloom. Turns out the black haw is in the elderberry family, and it spreads similarly, so there may well be more than one plant nearby. The black haw is hardy enough to withstand icy cold winters and drought, so it should do well here. Apparently, the fruit is edible and tasty and can be picked and eaten when ripe in late summer. If it isn’t ripe, don’t eat it! Unripe fruit will make you ill, as will all other parts of the plant. I’m sure I don’t have to say this, but before you consume anything, be absolutely sure you know what it is! Birds and other wildlife also enjoy those berries. The black haw supports more than 100 species of caterpillar.

Virginia Working Landscapes, a division of the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute here, will be coming out later this spring to survey plants and birds on the mountain. (I’ll be talking more about that in future newsletters.) They’ll also be recording box turtle observations as part of a project with the Smithsonian’s Turtle Ecology and Conservation lab. Box turtles in the wild can live as long as 100 years, if they can avoid being kidnapped and made into a pet, hit by a car, or run over by a lawnmower, along with a number of other dangers. The turtle will usually stay in one territory its whole life, and it’s tough for turtles to survive in lands remade by development and agriculture. When I learned that VWL would be watching for turtles on the mountain, I realized that I’d never seen a live box turtle here. Then, the very next day, I was in my truck headed down my driveway, and there it was— a box turtle in the middle of the gravel road. Of course, I stopped while it finished crossing. (And I took a photo.) I wonder if it always crosses in the same place. Now, I look for turtles every time I drive down the mountain.

I’m struggling with a profusion of weeds popping up all around the house. It’s not too surprising, because the land immediately around the house was disturbed by excavation, topsoil was moved around, and seeds were introduced on construction equipment and vehicles. But understanding why it happened doesn’t make me any less frustrated by it. So when I find a good native plant amid the mess of nodding thistle, yellow rocket, and wheat (yes wheat! we planted rye to prevent erosion around the site during the construction, and now wheat plants outnumber the rye…), I get excited about it. I’m seeing a lot of native wild bergamot and wild geranium. Those don’t surprise me because they were here before, and I’m happy they’re still in the seed bank. But I also spotted a native plant I’ve never seen here before: miami mist (Phacelia purshii). This flower, which is tiny right now but can reach 2 feet tall, is usually found in the mountains. It’s come to the right place. This annual wildflower supports several specialist bee species, including super-small mining bees and a bee called Hoplitis simplex that is so uncommon there have been no observations on iNaturalist.

Signs of life

Friend/foe

For the first time since I started coming here, the mountain is overrun with poison ivy. It’s climbing over rocks, along fences, up trees, and more problematically, it’s popping up in the fields at my feet, where it’s difficult to see amid all the other rampant growth.

Poison ivy is a native plant, and birds love the berries—more than 60 species of birds around here will eat them, including the bobwhite. The seeds survive the bird’s digestive system and get distributed all around the meadow. So it’s natural that this is happening. But for obvious reasons, it adds yet another layer of difficulty to working in the fields in spring and summer.

I’m going to risk jinxing myself right now by saying that I have never had a poison ivy rash (fast forward to next month, when I’ll be typing this newsletter while drowning in calamine lotion). But just last week, I apparently had an allergic reaction to an autumn olive bush. It was around 5 feet tall. I pried it out of the ground with a weed wrench, it fell toward me (expected), and as it went by, its branches brushed across my neck. A few hours later, I had an itchy rash on my neck. Fun times! I can’t find any evidence that the autumn olive is known to cause skin irritation. Just lucky, I guess!

Back when I had young kids playing in a suburban backyard, I sprayed the poison ivy that grew along our fence. Now I know that’s a bad idea. So what to do about all of this poison ivy? Well, nothing. Many of the fields where I’m seeing the ivy were bush-hogged in winter 2024, and since the plant is a pioneer species, it’s probably a normal step in succession. Each year different plants dominate while others recede. Even the ubiquitous yellow crownbeard has lesser years. It seems to be the normal way of things. In the next month it will start to become clear which plants will dominate the meadow this year, and, given that things are just getting started, it probably won’t be poison ivy. I’m hoping it won’t be stiltgrass.

Recommended Listening

Okay, I’m probably breaking an unwritten rule by recommending a podcast I’ve appeared on, but the show Constant Wonder, hosted by Marcus Smith, is an unusually uplifting, fascinating, and comforting listen, which I think many of us could use right now. The show focuses on topics of science, art, and history, and describes itself as “on a quest to find awe and wonder in all nature.” It was recently nominated for a Webby Award. You can listen to Constant Wonder anywhere you listen to podcasts, as well as on BYU radio, Sirius XM channel 143.

Book news

On Earth Day, I appeared at the new independent bookstore Wonderland Books in Bethesda, MD, where I was in conversation with Kathy Jentz. Kathy is an author and the editor of Washington Gardener magazine, as well as the host of the GardenDC podcast, where I was interviewed earlier this year. It was a fun conversation and a great crowd.

Also in April, I spoke with host Marcus Smith for BYU radio’s Constant Wonder program, season 10, episode 15. We talked a lot about what it was like to witness the prescribed burns in the fields here, among other topics. You can find it anywhere you enjoy listening to podcasts.

Bad Naturalist is available wherever books are sold in stores and online, in hardcover, e-book, and audiobook formats. You can sample the audiobook here.

You can find these links and more on my website news/event page.

Upcoming Events!

Here are a few of the events I have coming up. If you’re in the area, I hope you’ll come out and say hello!

Shenandoah National Park Trust, Wine on the Rooftop, talk and Q&A, May 15, 5:30pm (limited seating; registration required)

Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy, keynote speaker, LWC 30th Anniversary/Annual Meeting. Sunday, June 8. (RSVP required)

Missouri Botanical Gardens, featured speaker, St. Louis, Missouri, Tuesday, July 22, 2025 (registration required)

New events and the latest details can be found on my website. If you don’t see your city or town on this list yet, please reach out, and I’ll see what I can do to get there!

Check my website event page, or my Instagram or Bluesky feeds for details about events, and for more interviews, podcasts, and features.

Want me to visit your book club? You can reach me through my website contact page.

A special request

If you read the book in any format (and if you enjoyed it!), please post a review on the Amazon book page! It helps!

Finally, the tree mystery, solved

Remember that storm-damaged tree I was trying to identify in February? The one I still couldn’t identify in March…? Good news—it’s not an invasive pear tree! It’s not any kind of pear tree, in fact. Now that it’s leafing out, it’s possible to see that it’s a tupelo, or black gum, a good native tree that supports lots of bees. The black gum is also known as a cavity tree—it develops cavities naturally as it grows and attracts birds and wildlife that like to nest in those cavities. A while back, one attentive reader wrote asking if the mystery tree could be a sweet gum, but the sweet gum produces spiky seed pods, which, along with its star-like leaves, would have made it stand out here in past years. It’s good news that the tree lived through the storm damage, and I’ll be watching it to see how well it comes back.

Tell me where you are and what you see this month in a park near where you live, or in your own yard or window box. Send me a photo if you like.

And don’t forget to tell me about your favorite nature-related book or podcast.

The Official Mountain Poodle

When she’s not barking at Rocky, the raccoon that likes to sidle up to our front door in the middle of the night, Cleo can often be found taking in the mountain views.

Now’s a good time to subscribe for more mountain discoveries, book news, and the requisite poodle photos.

Thanks for joining me on the mountain!

Until next month—

Paula W.

Bad Naturalist: One Woman’s Ecological Education on a Wild Virginia Mountaintop

Now available in hardcover, audiobook, and e-book everywhere books are sold!

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